when I get to the edge of things, how do I track down the people I’ve been? I can barely remember being a school-aged girl in primary colours, let alone find her under the mess that came after. the suburbs take me by surprise even though the places I’ve been are places I remember having been. I just don’t remember being in them.  that was decades past so I have decades of excuses – but not…

A week after the foreign exchange student arrives, the rain starts. At times it explodes from dark clouds and nearly floods the town. At others is weakens to a drizzle. But it never stops completely. People roam the streets frizzy-haired, cuffs soaked. Dazed, touchy, and quick to argue. Even Beth, a life-long admirer of storms, is tired of the constant downpour. The joy of a rainstorm is its…

don’t trust my senses. can’t tell if it’s cold or I am. if I’m hungry or just weak, sad or just not happy. don’t trust the blue sky because the rain comes fast. not a cloud and then a storm – when did things become so difficult to predict? don’t trust where I am. falling asleep, I suspect I might not wake up. I have to make peace with death before I drift off. don’t trust what will happen…

the breeze coming through my window smells of old cigarettes and the stench should remind me of something past but it reaches forward instead. I’ll remember now someday so vivid it will make me cry. I wonder if alone is temporary (and I’m missing the chance to enjoy it) or if alone is the start of a miserable decline I could’ve stopped if only I’d caught myself in time. It takes a lot of…

I very nearly almost forgot I had a birthday. it’s not that close, it’s not next week but I almost forgot it was a possibility at all. aging though, that never leaves my mind. I count the minutes and the seconds, sometimes, that I’m wasting. there’s nothing to do but spend some time here: complicate a simple commission, worry myself into wrinkles, burn a candle full of sage on a new moon…

I named my cat after Einstein. Actually, I had the name before I had the cat. Albert (the kitten, not the genius) came to me shy and understandably wary. He was dumped when he was very young and adopted into a family of screaming siblings who tumbled over him for attention. He didn’t like hands, he still doesn’t quite grasp the concept of gravity, and like all cats he can’t get enough of a good…

it’s all too big and unbearable and here I am, burnt pink from the sun trying to reason with it. too small to be in the world, I cower from it. the seaside is for healing hurts you cannot see and I am a wound in need of salt. few escapes from the shame but the ocean swaying me still and pooling my senses—cold, lighter, brighter, with arms stretched for sinking.

i’ve got no problem with spiders

i let the redback on the ceiling of my bathroom die of natural causes and her body is yet to fall—a reminder of my kindness. the spindly one in the kitchen walked right under my foot as if i hadn’t been poised to stamp the very next moment —knows me better than i know myself. they see the sanctuary that is my second-floor apartment, where cobwebs are dusted inconsistently and apathy might…

How We See Ourselves (Where I Write About Webb Without Writing About Webb)

When I was a teenager I dragged my mum to an observatory on an overcast night. Unable to show us much more than the underside of a cloud, the staff sat us in front of a projector and played a video. It started on the Earth, a blue marble in perfect blackness, then backed away to reveal the Moon… the solar system… the Milky Way… and eventually the host of galaxies that exist alongside it. I heard…